Paper Authors

Jeff Froyd is a Research Professor in the Center for Teaching Excellence and Director of Academic Development and the Director of Academic Development in the Texas Engineering Experiment Station. He served as Project Director for the Foundation Coalition, an NSF Engineering Education Coalition and helped create the Integrated, First-Year Curriculum in Science, Engineering and Mathematics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. His current interests are learning and faculty development.

Debra Fowler
Texas A&M University

Debra Fowler is the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University. Dr. Fowler's current interests include research-guided faculty development with an emphasis on the development and use of learning outcomes in both course and curriculum design. In addition, she is committed to helping faculty understand how their students learn and how to help their students develop critical thinking skills.

Nancy Simpson
Texas A&M University

Dr. Nancy Simpson is Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University. She has over fifteen years of experience in teaching college mathematics and has worked in the field of faculty development since 1991. In addition to extensive experience in working with faculty at TAMU to improve teaching, Dr. Simpson has worked with national faculty development initiatives including the Wakonse Foundation's Conference on College Teaching and the Pew-Funded Peer Review of Teaching Project. Dr. Simpson is author of several journal articles, book chapters, and co-editor of a volume in a faculty develolpment series published by New Forums Press. She is currently the PI on an NSF-funded project, Writing for Assessment and Learning in the Natural and Mathematical Sciences.

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Systems Thinking and Integrative Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Although the eleven program educational outcomes in the ABET Engineering Criteria
require considerable breadth and depth in the capabilities of engineering graduates,
additional outcomes have been offered to encompass the modes of thinking required for
engineering graduates. One of these additional outcomes is systems thinking. Many
different subjects have at one time or another been included under the umbrella of
systems thinking, but more specific statements of learning outcomes are required. The
paper proposes a preliminary set of learning outcomes, based on framework which
combines an established taxonomy of learning outcomes, the revised Bloom’s taxonomy,
with a set of expectations for engineering graduates that has been supported by employers
and at least twenty-two institutions.

Introduction

Modern universities are facing numerous social and organizational challenges. Today,
institutions have to deal with significant reductions in financial resources, increases in
costs, demands for accountability for student learning outcomes, globalization,
advancements in information technologies, and intense competition among numerous
providers of education1–3. Universities are asked to produce graduates who are skilled in
higher-order cognition, such as critical thinking and complex problem solving; behave in
a principled ethical fashion; can accept and work harmoniously and productively with
people unlike themselves; have the ability to adapt to diverse and changing situations;
and take responsibility for their work4,5.

Modern educational organizations are no longer viewed as formal, rational and
hierarchically closed systems with hierarchical control patterns. A way to address old
organizational structures is to build learning organizations. For Senge a learning
organization is “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its
future…it is not enough merely to survive (survival learning or adaptive
learning)…adaptive learning must be joined by generative learning, learning that
enhances our capacity to create”6, p.14. The primary purpose of higher education in this
new paradigm will be producing learning, not providing instruction. The focus on campus
is shifting from faculty teaching to student learning7,8, with emphasis on active learning
and assessment of learning outcomes. The modern academic workplace is characterized
by the increasing demands from stakeholders (e.g. accrediting bodies and employers) for
documenting and improving student learning outcomes. Levine states that “with the
individualization of education, growing diversity of students and the multiplication of
providers, the emphasis will shift from standardizing process to measuring
outcomes…the emphasis will change from how students are taught to determining how
much students have learned”8, p. 265.